


Star Student

by NothingEnough



Series: anywhere but inbetween (generation x) [1]
Category: Generation X (Comic)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe, Autism Spectrum, Disability, Dissociation, Gen, Language, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's fortune?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Star Student

**Author's Note:**

> April 13 2015: This story is not for sale. All my fanworks are, were, and shall be free of cost. If you see it for sale or on a for-pay-only website, the persons selling it are fraudsters.

She's lucky, you know, well and truly lucky.

Paige Guthrie wakes up at five-fifteen every single morning. She likes having a few hours to herself before homeroom. Gives her time for a jog, a hot breakfast, an extremely long shower, and the forty-five minutes of silent agony she requires to pick out an outfit and a hairstyle for the day. When she arrives (ten minutes early, as always) at the three-car garage which is beginning to superficially resemble a large classroom, especially since the carpeting got put in, she's typically more awake than everybody, including their teachers.

She sits front and center, her backpack--clear plastic, as required by Academy bylaws--sitting neatly zipped-up by her feet, her purse tucked under her chair, and her nose stuck in a Calculus I textbook. Sean's at the "front" of the classroom, and he looks like the cat dragged him there, all bleary-eyed and staring mournfully at the bottom of his empty coffee-mug. He grunted something which might technically qualify as a good-morning when she arrived, and hasn't woken up much in the interim.

Everyone else gets there right at nine, the door connecting this room to the game-room banging open, Jubilation leading the bloodshot, shuffling herd. Everett's just about the only one who looks as happy to be here as Paige. She makes a mental note to talk more with Everett. She's far too mature to put up with whiny adolescents who refuse to understand how fortunate they are, and that's the exact look on every face around her but Everett's, like this is all some kinda chore.

"All right," says Sean once the very last of them--Angelo, of course, and she wondered what sorta barn his parents raised him in--thudded down into an empty chair. "First things first. We're not waiting for Ms. Frost, or else we'd be waiting 'til tomorrow to start up. Good news for you lot is, her classes are canceled until her return."

Quiet sounds of approval, most notably a "yyyessssssssss--!" from Jubilation, surround Paige. She declines participation.

"Bad news is, I had a chat with the Doc, and he's volunteered to take up the proverbial slack."

Paige counts three different mouths all sucking air between clenched teeth, three separate _chlk_ s. 

"What for, jefe? None of us are plannin' to be doctors," says Angelo.

"Maybe not, but Doc Zenmatsu knows about more than triage," says Sean. "He's gonna play tutor. You're all expected to use your time with him to catch up on what you might've missed out on when it comes to real schoolwork. And if your abilities involve any form of shapeshifting, I'd humbly suggest you pester him about it, seeing as Ms. Frost and I haven't any talents in that particular field."

Well, at least that seemed to satisfy her fellow (ungrateful) students.

"May we ask why Ms. Frost left last night?" Everett says. "I mean, I understand if it's not our business, sir, but she was here until at least eight o'clock, and it seems kind of, well, sudden."

Paige nods. She watches Sean's mouth open to reply, and before he can, Monet's distant, husky voice answers for him:

"She's picking up another student."

You coulda heard a fly fart. Paige, along with everybody else, turns and stares at Monet. She hopes her face is neutral, otherwise, it's definitely all twisted with jealous, confused hate. It's just... Monet's so _creepy_. She's a looker, and she's brilliant, and her spectrum of powers has to be up there with Captain Marvel or any two X-Men; and yet... and yet she's _creepy_. Spends half her time sitting in another world, for all intents and purposes, always rocking and sometimes hitting herself with that dreamy expression never leaving her, sometimes crying in the middle of class for no good reason and with no words. And the other half of the time, she's, to borrow one of Jubilation's pungent yet effective phrases, a stuck-up rotten bitch. And you never knew which Monet you'd get 'til she opened her mouth (or didn't).

She's talking now, which is usually a bad sign, but for once, she doesn't sound like she utterly believes her shit smells like roses. She's just... matter of fact.

"Monet," says Sean, very calm considering the dark circles under his eyes, "do you mind explaining how you figured that out?"

"Certainly not, sir. The layout of this particular establishment allows for at least one more person living here, presumably as a student, since all but one of the staff members live in the dollhouses. The Xavier Academy must have intended for at least one more student slot to be filled. I doubt Ms. Guthrie, whatever her merits, was the only person who flunked out of Xavier Academy; they must have provided you both with a list of potential candidates. And since the Academy has an impressive track-record for tracing mutants regardless of whether they have attended said facility, that list may be expanded to include mutants who are of the proper age and are not ex-students."

"I. Did. Not. Flunk. Out." Paige sounds so honey-sweet, it fools everyone who isn't looking at her face; Jubilation actually flinches, like she thinks Paige will bite.

"I apologize," says Monet, with a shrug that cancels her words out. "I also heard Ms. Frost on the phone for twenty-eight minutes last night--she paces, and the sound her shoes make echoes through the ceiling of my room. And within a half-hour, she left campus. I conjectured that you and she narrowed down the list of candidates to one, and she chose to pick said candidate up. Only I do not understand why she's apparently decided to travel to the candidate, rather than, for example, picking them up from an airport."

Sean finally puts his security-coffee-mug down on the table he's adopted for a desk. "Okay. You're mostly correct. I planned on this being last, but since it's come up, we'll talk it over now. We have been shopping around, as it were, for another student, but Ms. Frost located the perfect candidate, and not one that was on the list. A few months back, she felt a great disturbance in the telepathic Force. She couldn't trace its origins, and she was a different person then, so she didn't look too deep. She checked again last night for the cause of the wound, and she told me she's found him."

"Are you, like, gonna get to the part that we care about anytime soon?" says Jubilation.

"Yes, thank you for the editorial." Somehow, he smiles at her. " School policy bans me from telling you specifics, but I'm allowed a few generals. He's transferring here as a sophomore, he's from the other side of the pond, and his arrival means I've got to remind everyone of our policy on bullying."

Now Paige cannot resist the pull of the herd: every teenager in the half-classroom stares at Sean as though he's resorted to communicating in Venusian. Sure, they knew it. Ms. Frost and Mr. Cassidy brought it up to everyone, individually and as a group, every day, the first two full weeks of classes. It had tapered off over time when their teachers realized that shunning and sniping were their students' real issues, not bullying.

Yet Sean dives into the same lecture as though it's all new: "Laughing at another student's usage, or failure to use, their specific mutations earns a detention and a five-page essay. The same goes for other students' mundane classwork, and for any physical or mental disabilities or disorders you may notice in other students. Asking another student about any of the above, without first asking for permission, earns you a five-day suspension and a ten-page essay. Using our imprint of Cerebro--or your own deductive powers" (well, that's new) "to gain answers to your questions without asking, that gets you expelled."

He pauses. "I don't hear a 'yes sir.'"

"Yes, sir," Paige choruses along with the others.

"Very good. Now, your schedules..."

***

But she's lucky, so she tolerates the repetition.

She meets with Dr. Gateway for an hour; for reasons she doesn't get, Mr. Cassidy grades them on their attendance of such sessions at least three times a week. She gets it out of the way, telling the same story she's told this Doctor since he showed up on campus, the same one she insists on telling to the teachers and the students and herself. When it's over, she gets two hours of study time, grabs lunch, then goes in for three hours with Mr. Cassidy. Usually their time is shorter, but she gets him on a few rabbit-trails when she asks about how he discovered his own mutation and how he joined the X-men, and Jubilation and Angelo, apparently, do not see the need to remind Sean when their sessions ought to begin.

She's lucky, and determined to be the only student (other than Everett, she happily allows) who rises above the muck of this Academy to take her rightful place as an X-man, so she works out for forty-five minutes, drinks two bottles of water, writes a (class-mandated) journal entry regarding how she discovered her own powers (this story matches the one she told Dr. Gateway, of course it does), then eats a cold dinner of leftover pad thai.

Nine o'clock rolls around and it's getting late for Dolores Guthrie's daughter Paige, but the vague understanding that while she's not here to make friends, she does have to be Part Of A Team, keeps her awake. Splitting up the master bedroom, which is empty, with the girl's dorms, is a huge open space they've converted into a game-room. The dart board's never been used. Nick At Night's on the teevee; Maxwell Smart's talking into his shoe-phone, but no one in the room's paying too much attention. Monet's dwelling on a particular spot on the back wall; Everett, Jubilation, and Angelo are at a game of slapjack, and since Angelo's hand is three times as wide as his opponents, his stack of card's insurmountably tall. Paige curls her thin body into an easy-chair which must've come from somebody's living room and been donated to the school (it smells like corn chips) and pretends to half-read a Stephen King novel. She hates horror stories, but she's gathered from her classmates' conversations that they'd be impressed with her good taste if they believe she likes King.

And from the foyer three rooms down, everybody hears the click of the front door opening, the thump of it shutting, the indistinct lilt of Emma's voice.

Paige pushes her glasses up her nose and stares at the door which, sort of, communicates with the foyer. She expects to hear someone reply to Emma, but no such luck. After a few seconds' silence, Emma says something else, and there comes the sound of stocking-feet thumping down the stairwell to the foyer. Sean, also too far to be heard clearly when he talks.

Paige thinks of telling everyone else to shut up, but she doesn't have to. Everybody's quiet. She glances at the card table. Angelo and Jubilation both stopped with their hands hovering over a short stack of cards topped with two jacks. Everett's dropped his cards and half-rotated in his chair. Monet doesn't move.

A sudden cloud of footfalls. Paige identifies Sean's by the loping heaviness, Emma's by the hard heel, and a third set belonging to the new guy, a _shthump-shthump_. She pictures somebody wearing a set of boots and dragging their feet.

Sean and the new guy's footsteps trail up the wood of the stairs, while the stiletto click of Emma gets progressively louder. Abruptly there's the sound of a slap, and Paige hears Angelo bellow "¡Ah cabrón!" before the door opens.

Ms. Frost peers through the half-open door, and to be truthful, she looks as hellish as Paige has ever seen her. Her usual, uh, fashionable style's gone. Instead of heels, she's wearing what are for her sensible boots; her shapely legs are hiding in a pair of jeans three times their width; and is that a mustard-stain on the hem of that sweatshirt? "Evening," she says. "Pop quiz. When was the last time I had a vacation?"

"Before the school opened," says Paige, like this is a question on which she'll be graded.

"Correct. I don't know about you all, but I'm ready for a real day off. Class is canceled tomorrow. I'll tell Sean about it later. Maybe. Sleep in. That's an order."

She shuts the door to a chorus of whooping cheers, even Monet wakes up enough for a grin and something which sounds both relieved and in French, everybody but Paige. Darn it, she can't very well graduate early if there's no class for her to pass with flying colors!

***

Angelo argued with Emma and Sean both for five days straight about the no-smoking-on-campus policy back when school started. She remembers it well, since he purt-near derailed every single homeroom until he got his way: the class and staff, primarily to shut him up, all voted that smoking cigarettes was OK by the rules, but smoking them indoors was not.

Paradoxically, Angelo's willingness to go outdoors to smoke earned him a slight bit of respect, almost made him, from what little Paige gathered, cool. Not one of them looked forward to wintertime, but he sure seemed ready to dig through a snow-bank if it meant he got his fix. And, to be honest, it was kind of cool, as most teenagers who were not Paige Guthrie used the term, to all but start a rebellion right at the start of the school year. So when round four of slapjack ended with Everett finally moving just fast enough to beat Jubilation to the punch, and Angelo resigned while standing up and pulling a pack from his front pocket, it doesn't surprise Paige when Jubilation says she'll join him.

What does is that Paige feels her own body set aside her stupid clown-book, her knees creak as they unfold from beneath her, and she hears her voice say: "Me too."

Paige watches herself with a surreal form of comfort (she's done this too many times and knows what to expect) as her body trails after Angelo's and Jubilation's, and she can't for the life of her figure out why she's doing this. She hates cigarettes. Maybe it's the fact that there's a stranger in their house and she doesn't want to be there until the unknown becomes known.

She sort of hears Jubilation state "It's colder than a witch's tit" as she steps out the front door and into the little pavilion fronting the school. They drift in a somewhat caddycornerly direction. Paige thinks about how California makes people soft. Nobody in Kentucky, she thinks, has time for soft. She ain't, isn't thrilled with the fall chilliness, but she's not about to complain about it, either. 

She watches as Angelo, three paces ahead, pulls out a lighter. The flame lights a face normally reserved for the top row of a Halloween shop's mask display. And why are they going this direction?

"Which window is it?" Jubilation says.

"Over there," indicates Angelo, and now, Paige gets it. Her body knew before she did that these two were up to dickens. They're curious about the new guy, and they both had the constitution to defy a few sub-rules and direct orders to do a little spying. Well, not spying, not really. They're just looking over at his window on the off-chance they get an idea of what this guy looks like.

The window's open.

Too dark to see anything in there.

Either he's asleep, or the new guy's already sneaked out the house.

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin', Jubilation?" When Angelo says it, it sounds just different enough for Paige to spell it out in her head: _jubilación_. 

"I fink so, Brain," says Jubilation, "but just 'cause she's named Winona Ryder doesn't mean she can use a motorbike."

"Oh, Lord, not that again. Now, if I was the new kid, where would I hide...?"

Paige, thin arms hugging her own stomach, is already looking for the answer. Not much moon tonight, and not much by way of artificial lighting, but she's used to seeing in both, and her eyes adjust. About five yards from the west wing's outer wall is one dollhouse, the one for Dr. Zenmatsu. Twenty yards from there and the neatly clipped lawn turns into a spare copse of trees, which dissolves into forest. She supposes the new guy might take a stroll along an unlit road, but the trees are both lovelier and more inviting.

She spots movement, and for the first time since she said "me, too", she speaks. "Shut up, y'all, he's not hiding. He's right over there."

Jubilation scrunches up her face, then pops her eyes wide, but she's too used to producing plasmoids to light a path in the darkness, it's taking her a few extra seconds. Angelo's spotted the new guy, though, and his gray face takes on a startled sneer, which melts into a reassured smile. "Shit, you see his face, Paige? Those shadows make him look all fucked up."

She hadn't seen any shadows. Man. Angelo sees like a cat. After a moment, she catches up with him--the new guy's outlined only by star-light, and the weird washed-out nature of this kinda light plays a trick on her tired eyes, almost convinces her there are jagged lines running across his moony white face.

Then, flat, Jubilation speaks: "No shadows, dude. His face _is_ fucked up."

Paige takes five steps forward, and maybe they talked too loud, because the vague shadowthing turns and regards them, and Sweet Almighty, her blood turns to rime.

He looks like a goth poseur who's walking back to his car after getting kicked outta the club. Black jacket, black shirt, black pants (probably jeans, if she knows anything about teenagers it's their love of denim), black shoes, and a black... scarf? Maybe?... wrapped round half his face. The other half, the one they can see, that arrests her attention: even from this many yards off, she can tell, those are real solid lines of something running up from under the scarf. Cracks? They look dark and not, almost like opaque cloth drawn over a bare lightbulb. The thickest one splits his right cheek in half, nearly clips the outer edge of his eye, and ends near his hairline.

His gaze skips over them so quickly, she decides he must not have noticed them. If he did, he might not stand there in place, swaying his weight from foot to foot; and he wouldn't start rocking from heel to toe, his head bobbing like there's music only he can hear on the wind.

By the time Angelo silently finishes his cigarette, the new guy's worked himself into quite a lather. He just stands there, rocking like Monet in a fugue, and the hardest part is not laughing when his hands flutter like birds, then ball into fists, then punch the tops of his own thighs. Paige feels less guilty about this when she realizes her fellow students are, likewise, fighting an awesome temptation to break into giggles.

***

When they return to the game room, the _Get Smart_ closing theme hums quietly through the air, and Paige sees that Everett has engaged Monet in an ill-advised game of slapjack--ill-advised because there's no point in playing anything with a mutant whose powers are perfection. Three-fourths of the deck sit primly at Monet's side.

"Everybody okay?" says Everett, setting down his few cards. He's smiling. Paige doesn't know how he does it, how that gentle smile never quite seems to leave his handsome face. If he wasn't stuck in a place like this, he'd'a done well in Hollywood.

"Saw the new kid on the block," says Paige.

"You won't believe him 'til you see him," says Jubilation, a few giggles finally escaping her. "Dude, he's, like, retard squared. I think Emma wants him for a mascot, not a student."

Angelo laughs first, and Paige joins him and Jubilation; but really, whoever this guy is, he's not equipped for high school. He's barely equipped to get through elementary. All the rocking and flapping convinced her that he's probably not up for schoolwork more complicated than fingerpainting.

Everett's smile doesn't vanish, or change, not directly; something does around his rounded dark eyes, though. Their usual friendly openness slams shut like a door. Paige can't kill the gigglefit, but something in Everett's eyes makes her wish she can. "Oh, really? He's retarded, huh?"

"Way, dude, way. Like a--" And Jubilation, caught in the moment, not noticing the change in Everett, holds her bony hand perpendicular to her chest, and proceeds to slam it several times against her own collarbone.

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean," says Everett, smile widening. "You know who else people say is retarded?"

"Who, dude? You'd better not say me!"

Everett says, "My sister."

He may as well have dropped a thermonuclear device in the game room. The windows practically bend inwards as everybody but Everett sucks in a nervous gasp. Even Monet, she observes, touches her fingers to her mouth and leans back a little.

"Yeah, my sister. Her name's Vanessa. She's nine. She's got Down's. Her doctors say she's retarded, but that is a medical diagnosis, not an insult. Funny, though, when total strangers call her a retard and punch their own chests, they usually don't look like they've got medical degrees. That the kind of retard you're talking about, Jubilation?"

"Ohmigawd, dude," Jubilation says, and Paige can respect the slight awe in the girl's voice, awe aimed inwards at her own behavior. "No, no, look, uh, like, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't know."

"And if I hadn't said anything," says Everett, "you still wouldn't know, and you'd still be acting like a fool. Right?"

"... yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I really didn't know."

"Because you don't know if somebody's retarded by looking at them. And you don't know if somebody loves somebody who's retarded by looking, either," says Everett. "Maybe you ought to remember that next time you wanna break out the R-word."

"Yeah, yeah," says Jubilation, and this must be what she looks like ashamed, her narrow eyes focused on the tops of her neon-orange high-tops.

"Qué pena," says Angelo. "I'm sorry, too, man."

Four pairs of eyes turn to Paige. She realizes that they're waiting for her apology, and she feels a creeping heat rise up her neck. A million defenses swirl through he brain--she didn't know, and anyway this new guy really was retarded even if Jubilation took it a little too far--but that doesn't look like a row she can hoe with this crowd. "Sorry," she grumbles, and as she says it, her stomach does a greasy backflip, and announces that her dinner will be returning the way it came sometime in the next five minutes.

"No problem," says Everett, and at least he looks happier, the light returning to his deep-brown eyes. "Hey, how 'bout we play war? Between Monet and Angelo, I don't have much of a shot at slapjack."

By the time they shuffle the cards and start dealing, they notice Paige slipped away.

***

She's so lucky, she thinks as she stands at the bathroom sink and rinses her mouth. She stares at her own reflection. Oval-shaped face, conventionally pretty. Long cornsilk-blonde hair halfway down her back. Inquisitive blue eyes. Fine, arched eyebrows. Delicate mouth. Paleish, the tan she got this summer having faded a bit. Long Audrey Hepburn-esque neck. Bony wrists. Lovely. Lovely to everyone else, but her opinion don't count, so what does it matter?

She's so lucky to come from a family chock-full of mutants, people who'd never reject her for having an X-factor (but in those years when it seemed like she didn't have one and never would...). She's so lucky to be attractive and smart (never mind she knows she's a stupid monster...). She's so lucky to be here, finally, studying for a future in the X-men (forget how she's tried this already and didn't exactly flunk out so much as flame out...). She's so lucky she can't think of any way to handle it other than grabbing the razor in the tub. But her powers won't even give her the satisfaction of watching her wounds heal.

She can cut, sure, she can, nobody can stop her, but the last time she tried, the red lines running like tally-whacks down the inside of her left thigh only got redder and redder, the pain got worse day by day, and one morning she woke up to a throbbing agony overtaking her leg and claws of blood-poisoning raking her veins and the smell of pus. And she tried to go to school--her human school back then--and she fainted like a useless drama-queen in fifth period, and the nurse detected a fever so high she refused to tell Paige what the thermometer said, and the nurse called her parents and then called the doctor's, and by the time her parents' minivan pulled up to the doctor's, her leg felt on fire.

She had to show the doctor, Sofia Marquez, had to take off her jeans and stand there half-naked and crying and screaming whenever the doctor tried to examine her wounds, and Christ Jesus now everyone would _know_ and this was _worse_ than being dead, so much worse. Doctor Marquez said she just wanted to clean them out before they tried sending her to the hospital an hour and a half away. She said that but Paige knew she was waiting to get rid of Paige just so she could tell everybody in town _that Guthrie girl's one o' them cutters_.

Doc Marquez swabbed a Q-tip over the highest cut and a fist-sized chunk of Paige's thigh came off with it and both of them screamed. Her daddy broke down the door in a minute flat, and Paige didn't hear his fists banging on the door. God everything _itched_ and smelled like death and sickness and that piece of her lying on the floor didn't itch or stink and that gave Paige the idea, maybe if she scratched hard enough the rest of the infection and the flesh would peel away.

Daddy came in to find Doc Marquez cowering in the far corner with her hands over her eyes, and Paige a searing mess. She scraped most of her left leg clean and had started in on her right, once she scratched pieces flew off and it got easier to peel the next piece and it felt so much _better_ , and instead of blue veins and red muscles like a model from a biology course Paige found something under her skin that looked a hell of a lot like a dense wood, reddish-brown, heavy, unmarked by the razor or her fingernails, somehow bendy like her muscles ought to be, and she looked at her white-faced Daddy and thought _I'm a mutant now_ and she watched him throw up.

Lucky. So lucky to be where she is now and no one will ever know, no one's got to know. Here she can start over and ignore the blades and nobody's got to know how she got to this place, she can be the pride of the Guthrie clan as she always knew she must. She can do well at school the way she never could at home, and the shame of it all, well, if nobody knows about it, it doesn't exist.

A knock at the door. "Paige, it's been six years. You herding cattle in there or something?" Jubilation.

"I'm comin'," Paige says, voice husky with bile.

***

"I would like," says Doctor Gateway the following day, "to examine your medical records, with your permission. It will help me understand your history a little better. Is that all right?"

"No."

"May I ask why not?"

"No."

***

That night, the students all gather in the game room. Cards aren't on the menu; they're running out of games, so they decide to break in the dart-board. Everyone, including Monet, agrees ahead of time that her points don't count, and everything goes pretty smoothly. Paige notes that whenever there's a pause in the conversation, when the current player's focusing on their next shot, the eyes of everyone else in the room glance over at a particular wall. This is the wall communicating with the room assigned to the new guy.

"Has anybody seen him yet?" she asks when it's her turn, and is answered by a chorus of shaking heads.

Two games later and it becomes clear that Angelo might suck at most card games, but he's a predator at darts. He bows out of the next round before Jubilation can demand he joins her team. He pats his front pocket, pulls out a cigarette pack, and heads for the front door.

Paige, who feels the walls of this giant room closing in on her, moves to join him. 

Angelo opens the door to the foyer and there's the new guy.

Angelo says something which from the tone has got to be a swear word; Paige almost echoes him in English. Up close, the new guy's what Jubilation, if Everett weren't there, might call, like, a total freakshow. The bright lamplight reveals a pinkish complexion and proves those weren't shadows on his face. His face looks like the ground in July during a drought, all fissures and shatters, that odd not-glow just barely clinging to each crack like a blush. Same clothes as yesterday. Paige doesn't think he's brushed his brown, curly hair in two weeks. His eyes are about the only human thing about him, a plain greenish-blue.

He stands in the doorway, swaying to and fro, his gaze flickering like candlelight from Angelo to Paige to Everett to Monet to Jubilation and back again, circling the room.

For a long while, nobody says a word. Nobody moves. Nobody knows how to react to him.

Then Angelo, sounding for all the world like this is any other campus and they're any other group of students, says: "What's up, ese? You wan' a walk?"

The new guy stares, and stares, hands shuddering at his sides. Paige has enough time to think that he moves like a malfunctioning robot. Then he does something she never guessed: he nods. Not jerky and unconsciously, a deliberate, almost exaggerated nod.

"You gotta get outta the doorway first, man."

They wait, and after ten seconds, the new guy finally takes a few wayward steps back, letting them pass. Paige glances over her shoulder. Monet is smiling in a way she's never seen her roommate grin before. Everett gives her a thumbs-up, and Jubilation stares down at her high-tops and pops a bubble with her gum. As the door shuts behind them Paige hears her say "So, like, anybody wanna try dominoes?"

***

"You got a name?"

By now, one-third of the way through Angelo's stinking cigarette, Paige understands a little more about how to talk to their new classmate. The new guy doesn't talk, for starters. He stares, he nods, he shakes his head, but talking isn't on the menu. When they ask him how far he wants to walk out, they've got to wait an extra half-minute before he mimes a reply they get. And as frustrated as she ought to be, she realizes she's okay.

So she waits, wondering if he can reply to something which isn't yes or no.

The new guy stares at her, then at Angelo, back again, to and fro, attention rocking like his wide shoulders. At length, he bends down in on himself, getting down on his haunches, as she used to say back on the farm. Most of the lawn around them is well-maintained, but there are occasional patches of dirt showing like a slip creeping out from under the hem of a short dress. He taps his index finger on one such patch as though he's trying to send a telegram.

They wait, and finally, his hand moves with near-perfect control, writing in the dry soil. Angelo breaks out his lighter and they both peer down when he's done.

_jonothon_

As she watches, Jonothon cups his hand over the last four letters, smears over them, obliterates them.

_jono_

Okay. She grins at him. "Nice to meet you, Jono. I'm Paige."

"Angelo," says her other companion, hitting that peculiar _gh_ his name requires which she can't yet reproduce.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Jono nods.

"I'm a sophomore," says Paige, "so we're in the same class, along with Angelo here. My skin, uh, my power's that my skin peels off and, underneath it, I can turn into somethin' else. Angelo's got, uh, how many square feet is it?"

"Six," says Angelo, with a tone that betrays how he must have counted every square inch as it came in.

"Six feet of extra skin. An', well, you know, everyone's wondering what your thing is, if that's okay, Jono. What do you do?"

He stares unmoving until Paige understands she's not getting a reply out of him tonight. She stands up, disappointment pouting her lips, and Angelo starts up a fresh cigarette and asks about their biology homework, and they chat like Jono's not there, the wind whipping his name on the earth into a few nonsense squiggles.

Right around the time Angelo drops his second cigarette and grinds it to death under one sneaker-heel, Jono stands up straight.

"Are you all right?" she asks him, and like it's a response, his spidery fingers hook onto the top of that scarf-thing draped over the lower half of his face. His eyes are all on her and the intensity behind them sends a chill down her spine; there's a book of emotion there which no words could possibly spell out.

He tugs the scarf down.

The night breaks into a localized day as _oh my lord he ain't got no mouth_ his face just _ends_ , there's nothing there but _light_ , blue coiling smoking light like a slow fire, and she steps back, can't help it, he looks like an explosion waiting to happen, she sort of hears Angelo pray to the Holy Family. Just as quick the light vanishes and the dark is all the more profound, Jono yanking the scarf up so high it covers the tip of his long nose.

"Not bad," she hears herself say on another planet. "That's, uh, quite the exothermic reaction you got goin' on there."

"Fuck me, man, I thought I seen everything," says Angelo.

"Shut up," Paige says sweetly. "Thank you for showing us, Jono."

His trembling hand comes to what ought to be his lips. He touches a finger to his face.

"We won't tell anybody. Right, Angelo?"

"Right, right," he says.

"Well, then, if you're done with your cancer sticks, let's head on in. I'm better at dominoes than darts."

"Not better than me, you're not. You comin', Jono?"

He doesn't nod this time, but he does follow.

***

"What's on your mind?" Dr. Gateway doesn't ask anything she expected--mostly, why she's seeing him today when she's already been to his office three times this week. Nobody sees Gateway more than they have to. Even Paige, determined to make an impression as she is, doesn't trust him. She's been through too many psychologists to trust him.

"I dunno," she says, her hands (her nails are freshly painted green with coppery glitter) resting on her knees.

The doctor nods, as though he understands, and lets her sit in silence for thirty minutes. She sits and thinks about the last time somebody let her be. She thinks about the awful flood of light roiling out of the gaping hole in Jono's face.

"Do you think we're lucky to be here?" she says.

"I can't speak for everyone," says the doctor, "but I know I am. Do you feel fortunate?"

"No, I don't think any of us are," Paige says.


End file.
